Moving Forward through the Pandemic
Physical distancing restrictions are going to start relaxing soon. Businesses are going to re-open and we’re going to start gathering together in groups again. But this doesn’t mean that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 disease has been eradicated. It is still around and public health experts are worried that new infection rates will rise again.
What can you do to protect yourself? What can we do all together to protect each other?
You can do specific things to strengthen your mucosal immunity and we can all work together to reduce air pollution. Let me explain.
This corona virus gets into your body through your mucosa, those boundaries between your body and the outside world that need to stay moist all the time. These are, primarily, your eyes, nose, mouth lungs, intestines, and bladder. They are named mucosa because they make mucous when they are irritated. Your mucosa doesn't enjoy the robust physical barriers to infection found in your skin that stays dry, so your body uses most of your immune system to protect it.
If you round up one hundred random people and expose them to this corona virus, ninety of them will have no symptoms. Seven of them with have mild cold-like symptoms and three will get very ill and possibly die. Now, there are many factors that we are learning about that contribute to who ends up in which of these three categories. And some of those factors we can do something about.
You can take steps to enhance your mucosal immunity.
This is a photo of my computer screen taken during a recent webinar sponsored by Jeffrey Bland, PhD on COVID-19.
As you can see, some common-sense interventions, such as exercise and reducing stress, are important. But so are probiotics and fiber, B vitamins, Vitamin C, and Vitamin D. Flavanoids, beta-glucan and L-arginine also show up on the chart in multiple places. I wouldn’t recommend Echinacea on a regular basis as its benefits wear off after about a week. Better to save it for if any symptoms start. Naturally fermented foods, such as live-culture sauerkraut, kombucha, kim chi and such are excellent sources of probiotics. You can purchase any of these supplements through Fullscript and receive a ten percent discount, free shipping on orders over $50, and pay no sales tax. https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/shall1584636045.
As for what we can all do together, besides physical distancing, which we don’t want to have to do forever, recent research on the regions of the world with the highest death rates for the infection are also the most polluted. This makes sense. Recent research on the health effects of air pollution show that it has adverse impacts much more far ranging that we previously thought.
Nitrous oxide, a very common component in air pollution from fossil fuels, powerfully degrades mucosal immunity. This explains why asthma is much worse when pollution levels are high. So the recent lowering of air-quality standards in the US is the exact wrong thing for us to do if we want to keep more people out of the very sick category.
So, as we move forward through the COVID-19 pandemic, keep your immunity up. Get regular exercise, eat lots of fresh greens and other vegetables, take Taming the Bear: Take the Bite Out of Stress class, Fostering Resilience in Uncertain Times class (https://the7tools.com/classes/) and/or practice the Seven Tools of Healing to increase your resilience and make yourself impervious to stress, take B vitamins, Vit C and D, and a few other supplements and do what you can to keep the air clean for all of us.